Healthcare providers are openly embracing connected health technologies that enable them to track patient health and adherence to treatment plans in between visits. The 2016 HIMSS Connected Health Survey, in fact, showed that 52 percent of U.S. hospitals currently use three or more connected health technologies, while 47 percent plan to expand their use in the next few years.
This demand makes connected health a dynamic and rapidly expanding market. New home-based medical devices, wearables, and mobile apps can track fitness activities, count calories consumed and expended, monitor blood glucose and hypertension, measure sleep patterns, promote self-care, and more.
“Providers are looking for solutions in this area that will help them, particularly with value-based payments and bundled payments,” said John Sharp, senior manager at Personal Connected Health Alliance, a division of HIMSS. “So they’re looking for ways to monitor patients between visits, whether that’s through direct telehealth or remote monitoring or wearables.”
Attendees at HIMSS17 in February can catch up on the latest technologies connecting patients to providers in the Connected Health Experience, an exhibit on the show floor featuring more than 50 health technology vendors and continual theater presentations on connected devices and their impact on healthcare.
At the Connected Health Experience, attendees can learn how: patient-generated health data is flowing into EMRs, people are connecting with providers through portals and apps to manage chronic conditions, telemedicine increasingly is enabling virtual visits and gamification can figure into care delivery.
The theater inside the Connected Health Experience will feature an ongoing series of 20-minute presentations from Monday morning through Wednesday afternoon, covering topics including building a remote patient monitoring system, using the Internet of Things to transform healthcare, reaching underserved diabetics via telemedicine and a look at the next generation of vital signs monitoring.
Sharp said the exhibit area also will include interactive screens with educational information provided by HIMSS and the Personal Connected Health Alliance.
The Connected Health Experience will “benefit providers whether they’re already using connected health technology, and looking for more solutions in the area, or are just becoming familiar with connected health and want to learn more,” according to Sharp. The latter group, he says, includes many healthcare IT pros who “are being pushed by CIOs, who in turn are being pushed by their physicians, to find these kinds of solutions and implement them.”
Other HIMSS17 attendees who would benefit for the Connected Health Experience, Sharp says, would be insurers and pharmaceutical companies. “Payers in particular are looking for ways to improve their population’s health and manage chronic illness through mobile technology,” he says. In addition, the exhibit will be useful to “vendors who are looking to integrate these solutions into their product offerings.”
Sharp said HIMSS and the Personal Connected Health Alliance have two main goals for the Connected Health Experience.
“First, we want attendees to see that there is a broad range of connected health solutions from which to choose,” Sharp added. “Second, we want them to know that these solutions are beginning to demonstrate their effectiveness through real evidence that they make a difference in terms of clinical outcomes.”
The Connected Health Experience is located at Booth 7281, Hall E, of the Orange County Convention Center.
HIMSS17 runs from Feb. 19-23, 2017 at the Orange County Convention Center.
This article is part of our ongoing coverage of HIMSS17. Visit Destination HIMSS17 for previews, reporting live from the show floor and after the conference.
